Old Maid's Puzzle (17 page)

"Yes," he said.

This was getting interesting. "Full-on, mind-blowing, headboard-slamming sex?"

"You don't have a headboard, but yes. But we can't be late for our reservation, so you better get here soon."

"You're there already?" I said, jumping out of my chair. I'd tell Zorn he could talk to me tomorrow.

"I called from the car," Buster said, and hung up.

I had to get out of here. The thought of Buster in my house, ready to break our agreement, without me, was killing me. I headed back to the kitchen to talk to Zorn.

Zorn wasn't there. I pulled open the back door to see if he'd gone outside. Instead I found Jenn standing in the parking lot, staring back at the green dumpster. She was smoking.

"Jenn?" I'd never known her to smoke. The sight brought me up short. "I thought you'd gone home hours ago."

She put the cigarette behind her back. "Officer Zorn asked me to come back."

I saw with satisfaction that some of the cars were gone from the lot. No fat quarters were on the ground, so the customers must have found them under their wipers. Shore's van was still here. The hood of the van was open and a ratty mat was underneath. Shore himself was not around.

There was no sign of Zorn, either. Jenn blew smoke out of the side of her mouth and waved her hand around. "Sorry. I found an old pack of Kym's in the kitchen. It's really stale."

She took another drag and coughed.

"Why are you smoking? I know it's upsetting having the police around."

"It's not that."

"What?" I was beginning to see how worried she was. She'd bitten her trim nails down to where the nail beds were bleeding. Her usually perky ponytail was limp.

I laid my hand on her shoulder, and moved her back to the porch so we could sit down without seeing the dumpster with its fine dusting of fingerprint powder. Enough staring at the place where the body was found.

I remembered her trembling earlier. "This morning, it sounded like you might have known Frank Bascomb."

Her pale blue eyes widened. She nodded. I waited. Jenn needed to talk this out. I was the one to hear it.

A motorcycle roared by, and she jumped. She threw her cigarette on the ground and rubbed it out. She picked up the butt before I could.

She crossed her arms across her chest and rocked forward. Her voice was high and tight, like she wasn't taking in enough oxygen. "I never thought I would hear that name again."

"You knew Frank Bascomb?"

She nodded. "Unfortunately. Met him when I was in college. The sorority house was in bad shape, and we never had enough money to fix it up. He'd do odd jobs. Clean the gutters, paint the porch, fix the screen door. I just thought he was this weird guy who thought of us as his granddaughters and wanted to help us."

She looked off in the distance. Her pretty face tight with worry. "Man, was I wrong."

She had the matchbook in her hand and looked at the cigarette butt as though she was thinking of relighting it, but settled for gnawing on a fingernail. I fought the urge to pluck her finger from her mouth.

She said, "When he said he could help me pay back money I'd borrowed, I listened. My family didn't have the money to send me to school, so I went through on student loans and credit cards. I thought he was talking about loan consolidation. Stupid, stupid, stupid."

This was not going to end well. "What happened?"

I didn't have to wait long. After taking another glance toward the dumpster, she looked at the closed back door and finished her story in a torrent of words.

"He had me give him my next grant check. In a week, I got that money back plus more. We did that a couple of times. I thought I was going to end with up with enough money to pay off my student loans. But after awhile, the returns stopped coming in, and I had to borrow more money just to finish school. I wound up with loans for nearly twice what I owed. Seventy-six-thousand dollars. I never saw Frank again."

Ouch. I tried to imagine myself with such a huge debt right out of college. I wouldn't have been able to buy my house or run the business.

I was out of words. "Wow."

She nodded miserably. "I was dating Brad at the time. When he found out, he was livid. My husband has always said if he ever got his hands on Frank, he'd kill him. But Frank disappeared. I never figured he'd be back in San Jose again."

"You sure it's the same guy?" I pictured the prone body. "Was your Frank Bascomb about six feet tall?"

She shrugged. "I guess."

"Kind of thinning, sandy-colored hair?"

"He had a full head of hair back then. This was nearly fifteen years ago.

I said. "Officer Zorn is going to want to talk to you"

I wanted to wait for Jenn and make sure she was okay after she talked to the police. This was a big step for her. Buster, and my sex life, was going to have to wait.

I headed for my office to call him. I heard more laughter from the classroom. Vangie was getting a real kick out of Petey.

As I turned into in the office, the sight of Kym using Vangie's computer stopped me in my tracks.

"Kym! What are you doing?" I shouted, grabbing the mouse out of her hand. The day's frustrations caused a dam to burst inside of me.

She let go with a jerk and a squeak. "Hey," she said.

I tried to modulate my voice a little. "Geez, you know better than to use Vangie's computer."

There was no sign of remorse in her eyes. She pounded a few more keys. "I can't open my file," she said. "Or whatever you call it.

Kym's hatred of technology usually translated to her breaking programs irretrievably. Vangie had banned her from our office more than once. The computer program that ran the point-of-sale system was meant for the average person. Not so our office computers.

"Move over," I said, bumping her off the chair and sitting down. "What file? You don't have any files on here."

She was clutching a note that was in my brother's handwriting and thrust it in my direction.

"Kevin sent over a file with the directions for the Joyous Hearts quilt. He told me how to get it open," she said, brandishing the paper like it was a hall pass. A pass that allowed her to go places she wouldn't ordinarily go.

I looked at the screen, praying she hadn't done too much moving around. Somehow she'd gotten to a folder that needed a password. How had she managed to navigate here? A thousand monkeys, or one Kym, was all it took.

I minimized that file. That was not where the e-mail was.

Kym was whining. "Vangie can't say I didn't get the instructions to her. Kevin sent them, they're in there someplace."

I moved over to the store e-mail. There was Kevin's e-mail with an attachment, called JoyousHearts.doc, unopened.

"Are you kidding me?" I cried. "I told you this morning, it's too late. The patterns are finished. We don't have time to make a new one.

Kym stuck out her lower lip in a pout and crossed her arms. "Vangie said if I wrote up the directions..."

"That was six weeks ago. You can't expect her to be able to finish it in one day."

"It won't take that long," Kym persisted.

I sighed. She had no idea how long it would take. She expected the computer to do everything quickly and seemingly without human intervention. I tried to explain to her that Vangie would have to format the files and add our logo and the other graphics that would make it a part of our QP Originals. That it would take time to do it right. She wasn't having any of it. She left the office in a huff.

I clicked off the e-mail. The file she'd stumbled on came back up. It wasn't like Vangie to password-protect a file. I tried the store password, but it didn't open. I typed in an old one. Nothing. The title of the file was 20something. Maybe it was one of her music files.

I closed the file and shut down the e-mail. I could only hope Kym hadn't gotten into anything else. She could be as destructive as a computer virus.

I put my call into Buster, promising to get home as soon as I could. As long as I was stuck here, I continued working on my box of notions. I printed out barcodes and took the items out to the front for Kym to price and put out for sale. She took the box from me without a word.

Walking back to my office, I passed the kitchen. It was empty except for Zorn, making notes. I rushed to the back door, but Jenn was already pulling out of the parking lot.

I was sorry I'd missed her. I'd really wanted to make sure she wasn't too upset. I wondered if she would tell her husband.

I went back to the kitchen. "Is Jenn's guy the same Frank Bascomb?" I asked Zorn.

Zorn leaned against the door frame. "Probably. The guy in your alley had a criminal record. Small-time, but that could mean he just never got caught. Those kinds of cons rarely get reported. Case in point, your Ms. Carroll never told anyone."

"So was he a con man?" I asked.

Zorn shrugged. "Most likely."

"Does he have other victims?" I asked. So many of my customers were women. Vulnerable women.

"None that I've met so far," he said.

"Anyone see him before he died?"

Zorn nodded. "He was seen in the general vicinity that day."

"What about his family?" I asked. Somebody must be worried about this guy.

"Nothing so far. There is no missing persons report that fits his description. We put his picture up on Crimestopppers, and we placed an ad in the paper looking for relatives."

"What if no one claims him?"

"After sixty days, he's cremated and his remains are stored," he said.

"Stored?" I didn't like the idea that this man, even if he was a crook, would be stashed away without anyone knowing who he was.

"Yes, ma'am. We keep the remains in a storeroom on the premises.

Ugh. Stuck in a box in the police station for an eternity. I couldn't think of anything worse.

I said, "What about a picture? Do you take a picture of him?"

"Of course," he said.

"Okay, I'll put it up on the bulletin board at the store. Someone on my staff might know him. Or one of my customers. Someone's bound to recognize him, if he's local."

"You do realize he was dead when the picture was taken?" he asked.

I remembered the awful expression on the dead man's face. "Never mind."

TWELVE

BUSTER'S BIG BLUE TRUCK was parked in front of my house, dwarfing the elm tree that struggled to grow in the grassy median between the road and the sidewalk. I pulled into my driveway, jumped out of my car and flung open my kitchen door.

I hollered, even though I knew I'd left the store too late. But what were dinner reservations in the face of breaking our celibacy? "Okay, dude, you'd better be naked..."

"You're too late."

I followed his sing-songy delivery. He was in my spare room. The closet door was open, and I could see a row of freshly pressed shirts in a color-coordinated line. Yesterday's laundry that had been interrupted by the murder in my alley.

He was pressing his black jeans, wearing only red plaid boxers, a white sleeveless undershirt and black socks. A bright yellow shirt was hanging on the doorknob waiting its turn.

He smiled at me and went back to focusing on the crease in his jeans.

"Good thing you carry a gun," I said, peeling off my sweater, and dropping my backpack. "Otherwise this obsession with perfectly pressed clothes would make me worry about your manhood."

He ignored my sexist remark. Ironing put him in a totally mellow zone that was impossible to break.

"Everything go okay with Jenn?" he said. His voice filled my small house. I went back into the kitchen.

I didn't want to talk about the murder investigation. "Took way too long, and then she went home. I never saw her after she told Zorn she knew Frank." I grabbed two water bottles from the fridg. Drinking from one, I walked back to the spare room and placed the other on the end of the ironing board for him.

"Am I really too late?" I said, trying to sound as plaintive as I could.

He smiled his thanks. "We've got a half-hour to get to our reservations. It'll take us ten minutes to drive to Santana Row."

Santana Row? That was intriguing. Not our usual choice for dinner. It was always crowded with high-gloss people. Our age, but not our crowd. We were more burger and fries than Asian Fusion. That did explain the need to dress up.

Buster was still doing his countdown to departure time. "That leaves you twenty minutes to get ready. Reservations are impossible to get, even mid-week."

"We don't have to be on time," I said. "We don't even have to go there."

Buster looked up and frowned. "This is my date night. Next week, we can go to St. John's Tavern and play trivia. Again."

I'd been counting on something a little more grown up. Like a bubble bath for two. I gave up.

"How was your day?" I asked.

He shrugged. "Another exciting day at the computer. I'm looking at security footage. The pictures aren't the best quality, so I have to stare at them. The only danger I'm in is of getting eye strain."

His not being in danger was okay with me, but Buster found safe boring and not why he joined the force.

I took a pull on my water bottle. "Are you getting closer to solving the case?"